Life as an Extreme Sport

religious exemptions v public health

Bioethics

My initial response to this article is something along the lines of “no matter how crazy a religion seems to you, there’s always one crazier…” but in truth, that’s not terribly helpful (and I know it – I’m just sans coffee so far this morning, and that’s never a good thing). In thinking further on it, my objection to the entire concept of religious exemptions for newborn blood screens comes from the fact that many of the costs that are incurred from having one of the treatable diseases that are screened forAnd I do want to stress that the newborn screening really should be only for treatable diseases. Frankly, I’d hope that any parent would opt out of, say, testing for Huntington’s – why in the world would you want a death sentence hanging over your head for your entire life? Newborn screening should be for treatable diseases and disorders, nothing more. in these tests are past on to society.

Granted, I have no firm statistics for that belief, but I’m pretty sure they’re out there. Likewise, I’m pretty sure that the families objecting to these screenings – the ones with a bakers dozen of children (or close to it) – are the ones that can’t afford to have a child disabled by phenylketonuria or other treatable genetic deficiencies.

So what happens when someone opts out of these newborn screenings, and then later on finds out their kid is afflicted with one of the treatable diseases that are screened for? Can we really punish the child for the parents mistakes, not treating it because of the decisions the parents made? No, we can’t – there’s nothing moral or right about that decision. We don’t punish children for their parents stupidity, no matter how tempting it might be. So we get an added strain on social resources, a burden that doesn’t have to exist or be there, simply because the parents didn’t want to.

This seems, in a word, broken.

Then again, I don’t believe in religious exemptions for vaccinations, either. Public health triumphs that of the individual, or at least that’s my inclination at the moment (ask me again at the end of the semester – my public health ethics class might change my mind).

But beyond all that, why are we allowing parents to make bad medical decisions for their children? There are plenty of states that say “that’s nice that it’s your religion, but your tot is too young to be deciding what religion they want to follow, so no faith healing for meningitis, thanks – get thine child to thee hospital!” Isn’t the basic idea that parents need to keep the kid alive until the kid is old enough to make their own decisions? Shouldn’t this equally apply to newborn screenings, that the parents should be required to know if they need to put their kid on a special diet to prevent mental deficiencies that could be avoided through proper nutrition? Doesn’t a child have the right to a healthy life from birth, not just when sickness occurs?

Pet oxygen masks join firefighters’ tools – CNN.com

...and everything else

From CNN,

Fire helmet? Check. Gloves? Check. Axe? Check. Pet oxygen masks? Check.

Increasingly, little oxygen masks for pets are becoming standard equipment for firefighters. Hoping to save cats, dogs and other pets caught in house fires, animal advocacy groups and pet-products suppliers are equipping departments all over the country with them.

The cone-shaped plastic masks, which come in three sizes and fit snugly on snouts, can resuscitate animals suffering from smoke inhalation. They can be used on dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, guinea pigs, even birds.

“In the past, we used regular air masks like the firefighters use. In a pinch, it works,” said Norman Flanders, fire chief in this small Vermont town, which was given a set of pet masks by a local animal welfare group Tuesday. “But these masks are designed specifically to fit over the muzzle of a cat or a dog.”

This makes me happy. Several years ago, a friend of mine witnessed a devastating apartment fire. The humans got out fine, but the cat didn’t, and my friend sat crying into her coffee as she told us all about the firefighter who simply wouldn’t give up on the small cat, laying the little furry body out on the concrete and desperately trying to give it CPR with a child-sized mask. Apparently they had to pull the firefighter off the cat, he was just refusing to give up.

So this makes me happy. If you have the spare money, think about buying one of these kits for your local fire station. Everyone’ll appreciate it.

family members off limits?

Politics

Apparently Cheney doesn’t like the fact that his political base is questioning his lesbian daughter having a child – the same thing they do to every other gay or lesbian family out there:

Vice President Cheney blew up yesterday when asked in a TV interview what he thinks of conservatives who are critical of his lesbian daughter Mary having a baby.

In a wide-ranging interview, where he was unusually testy in several instances, Cheney got steamed when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer read him a comment from Focus on the Family, a social-conservative group that believes it’s not best for a child to be raised by single-sex parents, like Mary Cheney and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.

“I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf, and obviously think the world of both of my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question,” Cheney fumed.

Seems like he’s happy enough to get their money and court their vote, so long as they leave his daughter alone. Of course, to his credit, Cheney has long been silent on the issue, so you can’t really call him a hypocrite – directly. But it does seem to me that when you sign a deal with the devil, you have to accept the entire pact. Taking money from the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and whatever they feel like calling themselves these days does align you with an anti-gay position. Cheney is a savvy enough man to know this.

Of course, the best part of the article is Tony Snow, as usual, who says it’s “a double standard … I think that family members ought to be off-limits.” Too bad the Republicans (and Fox News) didn’t feel that way about Chelsea, eh?

Edited
Alright, editing this to add a more concrete statement of Cheney’s opinion, which only seems fair. In a 2004 CNN interview, prior to the elections, Cheney says,

Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue that our family is very familiar with. With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everybody.

While I can understand being in a position where you have to support something you dislike as an aspect of your job, I think it would be nice if Cheney exerted a little more force on this particular issue.

gift bans

Politics

No more free dinners. No more tickets to Yankees games. No more golf outings and boxes of cigars from lobbyist pals picking up the tabs. You might think that I’m still talking about Magnus and the bans on pharmaceutical gifts at Stanford and other medical institutions, but in fact this is the news in the Albany, New York political scene. Lawmakers are imposing their own gift ban at the urging of Gov. Spitzer. The state ethics committee will be combined with the lobbying commission to create a super-agency to oversee everything.

And on top of that, Spizter’s taking on campaign finance reform, in a separate package.

Whatever you think of him, I suppose you do have to give him credit: he’s moving quickly to do what he promised while he campaigned for votes here in New York.

Why I Didn’t Blog for Choice

...and everything else

Yesterday was Blog for Choice day, idea being that all the pro-choice folks celebrating Roe v Wade would blog about it, why they’re pro-choice, get the message out, ho-rah. I, quite obviously, didn’t. I could point to the fact that I had stayed overnight at a friend’s house, as I didn’t have power when I got home Sunday night, or that I got up very early to take a job candidate back to the airport, as his luggage didn’t come in on the same flight he did. (For that matter, neither did my luggage, which apparently thought the next flight in from O’Hare was much better for it than the one I caught.) Or even that I was busy all day with the job candidate, and simply reconnecting with the bevy of grad students I run with – which was admittedly a lot of fun.

But the actual truth of the matter is, I didn’t blog about it because I didn’t want to be associated with it. You see, the thing is, I’m anti-abortion.

Oh sure, I support the rights and liberties granted in Roe v Wave, and I think the idea of making abortion illegal is absolutely a horrible one, all of which makes me pro-choice, but these days pro-choice gets about as hard of knocks as feminism does, and for similar reasons.

For example, a popular pro-choice slogan running around the world right now is “An Intelligent Woman is a Pro-Choice Woman”, or variations on that theme. How utterly asinine and offensive – as if someone who was anti-abortion doesn’t have a brain in her body? (And do note the assumption of opinion on abortion tied to gender; does it not matter if an intelligent man is pro-choice, or are we just assuming men don’t have valid opinions?) There are many different moral points of view that can be coherent, well-thought, intelligent – and anti-abortion. Nothing in the rulebook of life says that if you disagree with a political or moral statement, you must automatically be an idiot – hell, I know quite a few people who’re definitely anti-abortion who have much more intelligent and well-thought positions on it than the sometimes drooling troglodytes on the other side.

The thing is, being pro or anti choice doesn’t map directly on to being pro or anti abortion. And by framing the binary oppositional position the way we have, pro-choice or anti-abortion, you automagically set up a linguistic-based impasse. The very language being used conveys the idea that if you’re not against abortion, you’re for it.

I am not for abortion. I think abortions are awful things, and we should all be working to reduce the number of them performed every year, the number viewed as necessary – either because of unwanted pregnancies, or because of medical issues and potential disabilities. And the only way we’re going to reduce the number of abortions is with comprehensive educational campaigns that work by education, not fear-mongering. By promoting safe sex practices and encouraging thoughtful sex and practical abstinence. By educating about disability, and working to destroy the myth of the perfect child.

All that said, I am also not for making it illegal. Reduction through attrition, not through legislation. The only thing making abortion illegal does is move it to back alleys and other countries, both of which significantly increases the danger to women who opt for that choice.

I genuinely believe that if we stopped slinging mud, stopped insinuating – or flat out saying – that people with differing opinions are stupid, idiotic, morons, and if we stopped focusing on the labels conveniently handed to us by others, we could realize that in actuality, people who identify as pro/anti abortion legislation ultimately all have the same goal, which is to reduce the number of abortions. Instead of focusing on legislation, why not focus, together, on that much more important goal?